Windows 10: Microsoft changes name for insider channels

[German]Microsoft has announced a renaming of the names of its Windows 10 Insider Preview channels as of June 15, 2020. The previous rings disappear and are replaced by so-called channels.

Until now, Windows Insider had so-called rings in which new Windows 10 builds were released. There was the Fast Ring, the Slow Ring and the Release Preview Ring – and in the meantime a Skip Ahead Ring. There the Windows Insider builds were distributed. Microsoft has done some tricks, where the next but one development branch was distributed in the so-called Skip Ahead ring over builds.

he quality of the insider builds has not improved – the releases of Windows 10 builds are buggy as hell – as can be seen from the numerous bugs of the Windows 10 version 2004 – which was frozen in development since December 2019 and generally released at the end of May.

Now Microsoft introduces a new naming model for Windows 10 Insider Previews. The ring model for insider preview builds is to disappear and will now be replaced by channels for the releases. This is because Office and Edge use a similar channel model. This should allow insiders to better categorize the preview builds with the different products.

Hey Folks! We're excited to announce some changes to the way we release new builds to all #WindowsInsiders. Meet channels! https://t.co/42xPVzX4w3
^AL #AreYouFlightingYet pic.twitter.com/aIt3boMVtu

— Windows Insider (@windowsinsider) June 15, 2020

Here is in brief, what we will have in future (the change will be made automatically for Insiders):

• The Fast and Skip Ahead rings become the dev channel, i.e. the developer channel.
• In the future, Microsoft will refer to the Slow Ring as the Beta Channel.
• And the Release Preview Ring is called – attention, drum roll: Release Preview Channel.

And new, additional channels may be defined in future – what a mess. We don't need no new names for channels – we need quality builds for insiders and ordinary users – imho.